because this woman had a disabled sister and they weren't sure if she was trying to save her sister and in any event they ended up killing both of these jewish women but though men start to tell her that story and she says oh. then she gets off the train at her location where she has -- where she is going to be stationed in the first night they are having dinner and it's part of orientation and the men

at the table, the german officer start to explain to her that they had shot the. then she is going for a tour in town and they point out a man in a technical battalion unit points out, there is the river and this is where 450 jewish men women and children were shot a few months ago. this continued. she starts to learn more and more about this because as she told me oftentimes conversations with soldiers got personal real fast. they hadn't been around -- these were men who had been around german women for a long time and they wanted to talk about this so when you become the recipients of these kinds of stories, she becomes so upset that she writes back to her

mother in november 1941 and she saved these letters and share them with me. she wrote to her mother, what papa says is true. people with no more innovation exceeded a strange odor. i can now pick out these people and many of them really do smell like look. oh what a slaughterhouse the is. one more sample of a secretary. very interesting case. we don't really have a lot of information on belarus, a very important geographically in terms of the holocaust in a very hard area to research.

it was brought to my attention by a colleague of mine. and we had an opportunity to interview this man. during the war he was a boy and now he is a grown man and a guy to the left. his father, the gentleman on the right was the regional governor of leta. it was not too far from fill this. many jews who fled often found refuge because there was a lot of workshops that it can establish their and he was seeing all the workshop activities with his jewish laborers and the entire family moved out to leta in 1942 when there were still a sizable

population in the region and so this young man and his sisters and mother were witnesses and went into the workshops and were actually witnesses to some of these mass crimes and mass murders. , sarah homestead was arrested by the soviets after the war and didn't return and was presumably killed after a quick trial. he had a secretary. her name was lisa meyer and they became lovers. here we have a picture. i don't know the other gentleman in the picture. these were photos from personal albums collected during the post-war investigation of the crimes. leah in this other photo was among those collected. she is identified and this gives an interesting picture because she is standing there with her shotgun and in fact that's part

of the story. she was according to survivors who testified after the war one of the better informed of many of the officials in the station. she was seen on various occasions recreating, kind of carousing with the german officials with, sarah hanweg. in town obviously they had a villa with a swimming pool and their own personal jewish laborers who could fulfill there at the -- every whim with furs and all kinds of crafts. in fact hanweg commissioned or demanded from the jewish laborers jewelry for his family. they made a train set, an electric train set for his son and had given it to him at christmas. when i met with eberhardt i was

hoping that he had some of these objects because most of that population was killed and i thought maybe this was something we had left from the population that was incredibly gifted in terms of their skills as craftsmen, jewelers and electricians and so forth. he didn't have the train set that he did have a ring and that ring is now displayed at the u.s. holocaust memorial. they have a very important exhibit right now at the museum on these kinds -- on this history. lisa meyer was seen going out on different excursions with the locals on the weekends. they have sundays off and in one particular incident the survivor was described after the war. she and commissary hanweg went on their sleds and often went in

the snow into the forest and they would go on hunts. they wanted to hunt for rabbits on this particular occasion. they didn't find rabbits and they did come across jewish laborers who were shoveling along the road and the german officials were with these women. they told the laborers to just run across the field in the snow which obviously is difficult to run quickly when you're running in the snow. then they shot the jewish laborers like they were shooting rabbits. actually some of those, several jews died right then and there. they were shot and killed and some of them actually made it to the forest. they made it to the forest and they survived and they actually came back and testified including lisa meyer and i thought that was something in that particular moment when that

incident occurred they probably never would have imagined that any of these jewish laborers would have survived in some decades later they would confront them and be faced with their testimony. she did not take simple dictation from the commissar. she was told to write up orders and was also told that one point by testimony given that she authorizeauthorized the shooting of 16 jews who appeared late for work. she was very important in terms of distributing the orders to the shooters. she met with the head of the jewish affairs who came in from the workshop. she was just out of the center of this because of her relationship with hanweg and because she had this administrative role. she was able toish the so-called gold cards which were the lifesaving documents for jewish

persons, the only other way to escape was to secure a labor assignment. secretaries also are involved in selections when jewish victims were marched through town. they could literally poll individuals out of that lineup. another secretary pulled a woman out of the march -- deportation march. she said she had not finished knitting a sweater for her so she pulled her out and these kinds of spontaneous acts of what seemed to be rescues but often motivated obviously by greed and personal self-interest. here is an image i found in the archives in germany rather recently. i couldn't believe this. these are very rare images from leta, belarus. here someone took an entire series of pictures from the

march 1942 -- these are jews being marched into the center of town and stripped of all of their valuables and brought to another location and shot. you can see the woman on the right. you see the silhouette of the woman on the right and it reminded me of the testimony of the role of women at these events. here, this particular image also very interesting and disturbing. there is commissar hanweg. i don't know who this woman is. i have tried to match her up with the images of meyer and hanweg's wife. it's not clear to me. she had a police official tour right and you can make out a young jewish man coming out from a hiding place and being led in

this direction. of course someone is taking the picture so he is essentially surrounded. and when i spoke to hanweg's son and looked in the testimony one particular incident in leta kept coming up as they memorably bent and i wonder if this is actually some way of depicting that. the event was that a young jewish man who had been working in the stalls looking after the horses heads stolen something, food, done something very minor but for that he had to pay with his life. he was trying to run away and they caught him. they wanted to make a spectacle of this to warn the other jews not to do this. they pulled out and hung him up on a broad and he was left there and eberhardt the child has this memory of seeing that. one of the officials actually had a german shepherd.

the german shepherd was also part of that scene, attacking the young jewish man. i don't have time unfortunately to go through all of these cases. another secretary in ukraine actually who was seen doing more than being involved kind of administratively but at the actual shooting sites and she herself was notorious for killing jewish children in the ghetto and even multiple testimony from dozens of survivors from america, israel,

canada who had stated that she has this nasty habit of killing these jewish children by sticking her pistol -- she had her own pistol that she fashioned and she would use that pistol and place that pistol in the mouth of the children and killed them, shot them in the mouth. these were some of the really disturbing and horrible cases that started to emerge as i started to dig a little bit deeper but as i stated these are very unusual cases. but they have to be taken seriously. i don't see these women as kind of freaks of nature or marginal sociopaths. as i started writing the book i started to see the momentum of this regime and the way that

these women were socialized and what they were even doing. many of these women were take -- partaking in these crimes with their children by their side, brutalizing the youth. looking at the future ice for seeing that this was heading towards a kind of violence that was socially acceptable within these communities. they were not punished obviously during the nazi era for the crimes that they committed. they slipped back into society in their roles as housewives or as secretaries or youth workers and so forth. they weren't habitual killers. they just change their behavior when the system collapsed and supported that behavior and gave themselves also went back to normal law-abiding citizens. that is why many of them were

not viewed by prosecutors as culpable and were not taken seriously. men and women are all of voracious greed. another part of the story women were at the center of this culture of consumption driving the holocaust not because of their gender but in spite of it, acting as human beings in extreme circumstances who became convinced of an idea in their own power to realize this idea. assuming that women are not capable of extreme violence and the kind of little engagement of activism that was behind that history is a socio- culture bias that has positive and negative connotations. on the one hand this gender construction is a sign of hope that at least half a human race not devour the other end in protecting the children will safeguard the future. on the other hand, minimizing the violent behavior of women creates a false shield, blocks

us from the more direct confrontation of genocide and all of the discomforting realities of it. the consensus of the holocausholocaus t and genocide studies was that the systems that make mass murder possible would not function without the broad participation of society and yet nearly all histories of the holocaust leaves out half of those that populated that society is if women's history happened somewhere else. it is an illogical of greenwich and puzzling omission. the shocking stories of "hitler's furies" were the darkest side of activism and show what can happen when women are mobilized for war and acquiesce in genocide. thank you very much. [applause] be.

[inaudible] we will not take questions and give more people the ability to ask questions. >> you mentioned that be women with the germans soldiers that had -- in a sense to them. you use the word soldier rather than ss and i'm wondering therefore wasn't well-known at the beginning of the war that the soldiers would confess and it was well-known in germany that they would slaughter them. we have only heard this but we didn't know. >> you right, right. we know the regular german army was what's more involved, regular german military units than was admitted to after the war.

it has now been completely debunked and that came out -- well yeah he was in yugoslavia but now the main story that came out after this exhibit, this controversial exhibit that was circulating in germany was a regular -- the six army for instance. the sixth army was the army that went to stalingrad and it was a martyred army because there was a big defeat. it turns out the sixth army on his march to stalingrad was one of the most -- had a bloody trail of involvement en masse shootings against jews. so when the army came in and 41 to the soviet union with these s. s. killing movements, the station themselves in places and they plan these massive operations of shooting

operations. thousands of victims. they might be the primary kind of shooting form the execution squad that this kind of mass murder, it lasted for hours and required a lot of personnel. and there was changeover in terms of who was doing the shooting. so you have regular soldiers coming as relief shooters cordoning off the areas and taking life photographs that were circulating. you talk about knowledge, himmler had to keep issuing orders around the eastern front, stop taking pictures. a lot of these soldiers were told you are making history and in the magazines the german equivalent of kodak or advertising, get your camera, your snapshot camera and bring it with you and document this wonderful history you are taking

part in. they were also documenting the killing because it was part of what this campaign was all about so you have a lot of evidence from soldiers in terms of documentation and these are circulating, these images. some of these images are being developed that can germany. i spoke to a woman near dachau amber beria who was one of my witnesses and she was young woman. she was a photo technician. she is sitting in munich developing photos of these atrocities on the eastern front. >> so that is basically a myth? the myth that the ordinary german didn't know that the atrocities were. [inaudible] >> we know from diarist like a diary of klemperer.

we were finding entries in diaries even in the fall of 41. the information is circulating. unlike the allied parties for instance, the german army they are moving back and forth so they can't really -- the munich -- communications are cut off and even if they have sensors you have people that were moving back and forth so that knowledge was definitely circulating. >> i listen to your book yesterday in audio and now is trying to figure out how to announce it. you were able to for so many years after this all happened on this subject that no one else has written. you used the expression slipped into society and after listening to the book obviously that were some women that were involved. you said many of them slipped

into society. after you met some of these people or any of them ever prosecuted for what they did? did you ever find somebody who because of what they did reported them and they got in trouble or went to prison? >> okay so most of the women slipped back into society post-war is what you mean. kind of were able to remain inconspicuous. including some of the worst perpetrators but of course the perpetrators, the few that i have in the book, i know about them because francis document i showed you. and johan was arrested by the west germans the secretary who was killing the children but she was acquitted twice. despite all the evidence. for a couple of reasons, first of all they didn't take --

interviewed the prosecutor because i was curious and have the same question. as he explained it to me he believed she did what she did that he couldn't enter the courtroom actually and get a conviction because it was based on survivor testimony which is not taken as seriously as the hard evidence documentation. so this is where it's tricky because the male perpetrators, you can reconstruct particular units that were assigned to particular killing actions and put a man in the unit. with many of these female perpetrators outside the camp system you can't get them on a camp guard list. if they are honor regular personnel listed as a secretary so these women committing these crimes, they are not following orders. they are doing this on their own. they are making a choice and the fact that they are not executed

as all the more astounding because in west germany the statute of limitations ran out in the 60s against everything that the crime of murder. these are accomplices, the secretaries they can be pursued. i started to wonder if he had been brought to germany instead of to israel he might not have been convicted because he could then -- they could place them at the crime scene. after a certain point the west germans in this case they have to prove a base motive. they have to prove that these killers are intimate -- anti-semitic convictions and excessive in their behavior. the paradox here is that we have women survivors saying look at what these women were doing and described some of this. multiple survivors from different countries are not talking to each other. they have gone really two different places. this is the 60s and they are not e-mailing each other. they come into court m. and they

have corroborating testimony fishes these women are doing things with a clear base motive and they are still not convicted >> you why did you separate the women that corroborated -- >> you crane? >> the women who collaborated -- be the concentration camps? see a lot of women. [inaudible] >> yeah.

the literature established that about 3500 women served as guards and we have documentation for that and that most of them have been trained there so the holocaust in terms of female perpetrators really focused on these cards. and my book is -- the participation is much bigger than that. we can't think of the holocaust is confined to these spaces entirely, these closed camp settings although they are very important. they are central to the story but they are not the entire story. it's a much broader level of participation. in all these different forms. you can't just think of it as a guard per se. the same way we develop the story and the interpretations of the men but all these different functions that make genocide possible, men and women together in these different roles and these different settings outside

of the camp system in their homes, in their villas, in these remote regional out posts. train platforms, not in these institutional closed settings. once those walls come down in those settings, and the story out there for we have now shows like camps like dachau were not closed off from society. there was life penetration of pete old who were delivering you know -- they were bringing bottles of juice and water making these deliveries into dachau and the community is very porous these sites. we know from the holocaust museums through research that more than 40,000 camps, the whole camp universe you have to

understand is now larger. that means we also have more cards. i can't leave we can talk about 40,000 camps and not raise the number of female guards and keep at it 3500 so that story will change. but i wanted to show that this was something much more widespread and various in its forms. [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> the shaded area is, at the heart of that is military occupy [inaudible] this was the bigger section here. so read -- western russia, moscow, that is part of the military occupation zone. but women were there too. these soldiers homes were set up this is the geographic.

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> absolutely. women were really -- this is one of their main chickadees featured in the book. i have got thousands of regular order of police and secretaries and they are amassing a huge amount of plunder either because they get access to the post near the killing centers in sri lanka

or the actual mass killing sites and the nurse i highlights today at one point she described to me how she was charged with going through the clothing that have been taken from the killing site and was being mended and repaired and sent back to germany through the welfare association which is very much a women's professional charitablcharitabl e organization so they are handling the movement is of literally jewish clothes, cleaning them, mending them and sending them back to the reich or german refugees. the secretary who was in minsk, that case the khe sanh many jews were deported to minsk from germany and killed in a place outside the city, huge barns filled overflowing with jewish belongings and they developed a

whole language in the office around this which i think there's so much going on behind the scenes that is part of this his history. they talk about jewish sausage. the women are organizing the food that is confiscated his coming into the office. like a modern-day office work were putting food out to have a celebration and they are taking food and talking about it. the goal that is taken from the bodies in the safe that sabina has access to as the secretary, very important incident. she needed a gold fillings. she went to the dentist and she needed a gold selling and are said to her just bring the certificate and you can have access to the safe. take the gold that is in the safe and she was questioned about that after the war. she insisted that she did not have that gold and that it

somehow got lost. she didn't deny taking it. she said it got lost somewhere at the end of the war he went or house was raided during the occupation. the prosecutor did not tell her to open it up. maybe she had it in the room. >> all of these women were doing well in their roles. did you find any stories of otherwise in this area? [inaudible] >> what we think of in terms of women and being the mediators or

nurturing or may be involved in more resistance at timothy's and maybe even in courage in their husband not to be so violent in these kinds of roles and indeed there were these cases. there is one case in particular in the book of frau highish and stein. she was involved in hiding a jewish girl i believe. she was the wife, i think she was the wife of a forester and she was brought before a special court and she was given the death sentence. she was killed and the judge in the verdict at the end of the war said she should've known better. she came from an educated household and she should have known better. so the stories of women who did defy the system are also very hard to piece together. but they are there and you know

i think that's something that also has to be researched. i don't think they are as numerous as the picture that i just portrayed today but it's important also to document them. the one -- the young woman who is the auto technician, the reason why know about her is because she was actually hiding those photographs in hiding other things from the dachau camp and her family's beehive. she used to put her hand in the beehive to find things which was a good hiding place for issues identified by the community of dachau for her civil courage. she was also young german woman who for various reasons -- reasons try to do something an individual way. most of these women -- at the end she say what could i have done? what could i have done?

>> you think a lot of them felt guilty about what they did? how did they react to it when they were found guilty? >> it's so hard to document and interpret what might be signs of feelings of shame or remorse or embarrassment. when you talk to witnesses, men and women, who were involved in this, even involved in the crimes, first of all women are not traditionally telling gruesome war stories so it's difficult for them to recount that level of brutality's or unpleasant part of the past. they'd rather not talk about that. when it is discussed, it's difficult for me to interpret

lee what their feelings are about that. now if someone says to me, and this has happened in the documentations as well as in person, starts to speak about jews and uses the language of the time, anti-semitic language of the time as if time had not passed, then i can conclude that person, that ideology is so invested in their identity and their thinking that is probably how they were before it. but it's really really hard i think especially with the passage of time for people to express -- you don't know if sometimes we mix of shame with remorse. it's very tricky to know what's being expressed when the person is having a hard time talking about what she witnessed or did.

[inaudible] >> yeah. we have this ability to adapt. human adaptability and if you were not on the receiving end of it and if you talk to, if you are not a victim of the crime and you have the power committing it, i think in terms of trauma and being able to kind distance and adopt is probably a lot easier but cycle and is -- psychoanalysts can probably tell me otherwise. that's out of my realm. [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> i think the kind a sick human behavior comes out of this history is not specifically german. those were very special circumstances at that time that rocked it out. at that moment in germany in the 20th century and the jewish population, that's very historically specific but the kind of bertell aziz and the motivations behind it, the greed and a way that men and women participated, the systems that create genocide. hitler did not invent genocide. he invented auschwitz. [inaudible]

>> that was initially what you are going to do. where else did you find information? >> oh yeah, so my research took me to many archives. the holocaust museum archives and yad vashem and many archives in germany and local archives and i went back to the ukraine several times. i was in poland. france and the collection in paris. so yeah i went to various repositories to collect documentation the national archives in washington and there was quite a bit of fieldwork. i started an interview project in germany to collect witness testimony and that often got me closer to people who are more involved. whenever i found documentation about some of these women they

sent letters and made phonecalls and try to make -- find out if they were still alive and if i could talk to them. i ended up picking these 13 women because the material was rich enough to tell their stories and also they were representative of these different types that identify. i talked to him many more women and i just couldn't get enough. i couldn't get something on one chapter their lives but i wanted the book to be like an entire tragic way to put that chapter in context. so i spoke to -- i interviewed about 40 witnesses and the 13 women here i had and wrecked contact with seven of them. several had passed away in 2003. many of them had already passed away.

[inaudible] >> yeah, i did. [inaudible] i didn't have a chance to talk to her. she died in -- she died in 2003 and on a petri died in 2000. they spoke to the prosecutor in that case and i talked to the defense attorney. i talked to jewish witnesses who went to the trial. it was very interesting but she was completely -- she conveyed absolutely no remorse.

the way she conducted herself in the courtroom and the prosecutor said to me she is someone i would never want to encounter on a moonlit night. she was eyes golden in the courtroom was not a sympathetic defendant whatsoever. she was indicted for aiding and abetting in the killing of 9000 jews. [inaudible] absolutely, they are applying the old criminal code which is regular homicide in regular murder in the context of genocidal kind of system. it didn't fit. but it can be interpreted differently. today for instance it's interpreted differently.

it's up to the prosecutor and the judge. after the war she went to the west german investigative authorities and she sends documentation about the people she spoke to, the soldiers who admitted they had taken part in these mass shootings. she denounced them to the authorities after the war. she was a very important big and she told them there were nazis everywhere. i found the records that she submitted in the west german -- so i could see what she she sent and how they were reacting to it so yeah. >> i was curious, two things. [inaudible] i don't know if you ran into that.

>> is probably a reference to the so it capabilities in the p.o.w.s killed during the war because they were basically either shot or the nazis abandoning them. the military abandon them in this p.o.w. camps and they have no rations. the jewish sausage is more about the office talk about the plunder that was coming in the form of food. >> i just have a follow-up. based on your studies of historw accepts the reinterpretation that the people knew what was happening and that is the way it's being taught so therefore, although they don't take

responsibility, have they come to the conclusion that enemy as opposed to previous explanations a large but small percentage. [inaudible] e. i think you were getting at to what extent germans have come to terms with this history. this broader complicity. >> and i guess now that generation is dying off, with the new germans accepting this and dealing with it or has it become a matter of history? >> the germans, the west germans in particular over the years have developed -- it's become a model history of

the restitution issues, a morella station in committees. it's so what has happened in germany since the war is quite remarkable and impressive group post-genocidal society. you have got the reality of individuals who participate in these crimes and this is specific to austria. austria is even worse. so this is about wanting to return to normality and two normal understandings of women's behavior, that kind of normality and yes, putting the history behind them and moving forward and there were steps that the west germans took that were clearly indicative of not only moving forward but letting it get away murder so that the

legal reforms. they let people reentered the civil service. they let his boss who was indicted eventually for killing 11,000 jews, he was able to go back and do the police forces after the war and these people continued their profession who were involved in the holocaust so there was that kind of story that truly shows the system did not -- wasn't aggressive enough and they could've interpreted a lot differently. they suddenly became more liberal in their interpretation. he was convicted recently. that was a new understanding of the law. they decided at this late stage that because he was a guard in the soviet war in the soviet war's primary purpose was to kill. it was a martyr operation that one is by association guilty.

you are in a killing operation. that is the task so they decide this was a broader interpretinterpret ation. that could've been the case earlier on and it wasn't that i think the germans in general, there are generational issues now in terms of confrontation with the past. i think young germans, those who are in their teens right now, there is a lot of fatigue with the subject matter. they feel like they have had too much of it in grammar school and ironically they don't get enough of it in college but i think the university level is the time to approach the subject. there is an effort now to try to get holocaust studies and professorships getting the curriculum at the university level because people need to be trained to run the memorials and to be in this history in germany. so there are some pieces within the system. they're not perfect but we are

still working on that. but it's difficult to this day. there are still some taboos in talking about this history. it's understandable but it's not insurmountable. >> you said you interview the families of the children. what was there and -- their reaction about their mother or whatever? >> when i did interview one of the perpetrators, the family of one of the perpetrators, it's really an interesting story. i can't go into a lot of detail about it but they believed that their mother was not so much a perpetrator during the war but a victim of post-war injustice. so they believed pointed this

finger at the east germans for arresting the mother and keeping her in jail for her life in killing their father. that was their reince because you can't blame the children for the sins of their father. their experience was the loss of their parents after the war. [inaudible] >> in the early 90s when i went to graduate school but i was first exposed to it in the 80s. i was in vienna in 1985 studying german and music. i hadn't gotten to the 20th century yet. those were the good old days. it was that point i was in vienna that the scandal came out and i was going to some of these smaller towns to these pubs and listening to these former austrian soldiers talk about the eastern front and realized.

one last question. [inaudible] >> a lack of investigations and trials. there is not been a trial against the nazi war criminal in austria since 1975. a the cases that you read in my book about the women in terms of the few that were pursued in the way they were treated, with a little bit too much respect. >> a reminder that the book is available. >> thank you very much. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much. >> top down is the name of the book and novel of the kennedy assassination joining us on a tv is author jim lehrer. and novel about the kennedy assassination. >> that's right. it's based on an experience i had on november 22, 1963. i was a reporter with the afternoon newspaper in dallas that i had an experience on that day has to do everybody else who was involved not elena coverage but just involved with that day. he kind of stuck in my head in

my craw for 50 years. i used it as a seed for a novel which is about the bubble top over whether it was or was not at any given time on the presidential limousine that day and what consequences that might have had and the secret service agent who was overcome by guilt ,-com,-com ma fictional secret service agent overcome by guilt over what happened that day. >> are you featured in the book as a reporter? >> some people have suggested that. and narrator is a reporter and i was a dallas newspaper reported. on that day he didn't do exactly what i do with some modifications but after that its strict lee fiction. sure it's based on my experiences as a newspaper man in texas and a journalist but it's fiction. >> where were you that day? >> he - they are -- the kennedys were only going to

be in dallas for three hours. it was a noon event. that was a huge thing. the entire city staff was involved in the coverage of the kennedys. it was the biggest story we had in dallas in a long time. my assignment was to cover the kennedys arrival and the departure of the motorcade and then stay there until they came back and then report on the departure. as it turned out i got the word in a restaurant at the airport after i had reported every morsel i knew about the departure. i went inside to have lunch with other guys and the wages came in screaming and crying and said oh my god they have shot kennedy and connolly too. i ran to the phone and they told me to go to the hospital and the police station. that was my day and for the next several months i did nothing but

kennedy assassination investigation stories. >> writing top-down, was a cathartic? >> you know i think it was. i hadn't intended it to be. i certainly wasn't thinking about the 50th anniversary. that was my publisher's idea. the but i'd have come out earlier but it's a story i wanted to tell and i always wanted to tell and decide it was the first time to tell it. but when think about it but i didn't see it as cathartic when i wrote it. i didn't see it as hard as media wise. >> this is your 15th but? >> this is my 21st novel, 24th book. >> how a semiretired for you? >> well retirement is a word that is anything to me a dime is busy now as they ever was. i just don't do the show anymore and that's like saying i don't

get wet when it rains anymore. that was a huge deal in my life. every day no matter what it is:00 eastern time i would have a tie on and share on and i don't have to do that anymore. what it means i was always writing even when i was doing the news hour now i just have more space between events. i'm still writing and i have more space and more time to spend with my kids and my grandkids. in my case it really is true. i am the happiest nonretired retiree i know daimler's most recent novel is top down, a novel of the kennedy assassination. this is but tv on c-span2.

.. a she placed her hand up against her chest. she came back and said, students, i have terrible news, president kennedy has been shot, but he is still alive.

take out your rosaries and let's play it -- pray for the president. back in those days rosaries or standard operating equipment. we all took out our rosaries, saying each bead. twenty minutes later she came out in the hall and did not tell us anything. see was crying. we knew it was over. >> host: where was that schools? >> guest: in norfolk, virginia, said francis elementary. they will kill me but don't mention it. i remember everything about it. and remember everyone was crying. and i went to my locker. a friend of mine was, in the locker for the weekend because the next week was thanksgiving. the odd thing is -- i guess you have to be in catholic school of the time to understand, but i remember saying to my friend, he's the only catholic l. -- ever elected president and did not live to finish out his term.

that is the way we looked at it. i was seven when he ran for president, and i was so excited. it was the eighth sacrament to be for john f. kennedy. i passed out literature in my neighborhood about a. i remember a woman slamming the door and saying, i don't support papistry that it not know what that was. i had to ask my father, but it was a big deal, and there was a lot of anti-catholic prejudice. >> i have a very vivid memory of our principal walking into our second grade classroom than telling us. and the two things that i remember after that when i got home standing at the coffee table and my father all the me while i was trying and in the drums. and then on sunday coming home from church and tournament tv and watching live cause wall being shot. what got you interested in politics? >> guest: honestly, john f. kennedy did. that is one reason why did the

book. i always had in the back of my mind that i wanted to write about this. and we tried. we are doing a big project on kennedy. the book is a 5-year project. that is why it is 600 pages. you given academic another year and he will have another hundred pages. we are doing a massive online free course to anyone who wants to sign up through the course. we are doing a special mobile lab it is going to have all of that new information and data that we compiled about the assassination on there. that is going to be available. it is the whole presidency, the assassination, and then the legacy through the nine presidents. that is what we try and do, trace him through his nine successors. legacy is a kind of life after death. >> host: short. how long have you been at you be

a? >> guest: since 1978. i also went there as an undergraduate. i used to have lunch with thomas jefferson. that was my students say. >> host: present company excepted, who is your favorite historian? >> guest: oh, my gosh. there are some many of them. on the kennedy side of all mention bob ehrlich. >> host: most balanced of all. i agree. >> guest: it is fact based. i don't think in the end people who write books that are a little too misty night, i do not think that they're contributing to what people really need to know about historical things. >> host: was not too far, but not too hard. >> guest: exactly. i agree. it. >> host: what makes a political historian? >> guest: i am in politics.

whether you are doing political history, regular history, political science, you have to be able to detach yourself to a certain degree. your own personal feelings. everybody has opinions. we all come with batteries and opinions attached, but opinions are a dime a dozen. everyone has got one on anything so i think it is important to be fact based. very important to uncover new facts that have been ignored or have been obscured in the past. that is what we have tried to do in the kennedy half century. >> host: white is read this book? >> guest: well, given the age of my generation and older generations of won't be too long before there are not many people around to remember personally the kennedy administration while he was alive or leave it to -- even the assassination. this is a great opportunity to

clear away some of the myths that we see developed around john f. kennedy, the assassination, and what followed . many things about it that i enjoyed. you sift through so many of the different theories, examine them without prejudice, credible and not credible. what did you discover that has not been known in the last 50 years so. >> we discovered a number of things. on his presidency people misremember kennedy. in no way they confuse him with bobby and the later years and, of course, ted kennedy the liberal line of the senate. jack kennedy was by far the most conservative of his brothers.

that is the presidency part. on the assassination part, we wanted to make a contribution. we wanted it to be based upon the scientific method. again, not only does everyone have an opinion, in this field everyone has a theory. there are a million theories about kennedy's assassination. there are surprisingly few hard facts. the question i always ask people is, when you have read a theory, when you have read someone's opinion about the kennedy assassination, is there enough proof and evidence so that the role of a court of law. the answer is in the vast majority of cases no. >> historians have to deal with other ways to enforce intellectual law that will never be -- no one will be tried or

convicted of the assassination of john kennedy. but do historians have an obligation to police that history? >> to a certain degree. of course, you police bad history with good history because in the end i think the marketplace response to fact base analyses, and people recognize prejudice. so that is important. you have to leave it to the marketplace. with our first amendment i think everyone is entitled a sell whenever they want, certainly about the murder of a president, but what we try to do is focus on a key piece of evidence. of course first we start to. the house investigation. the house investigation started. it first started. got organize a 76, reported a 79. the reason that happened was

because the warren commission, even by that time have become enormously unpopular for good reason. it was a political commission. it had a political timetable. johnson wanted it out of the way before the key parts of the general election of 64. johnson and j. edgar hoover, the fbi director and others had already decided within 24 hours of the assassination that was what was the lone gunman for various reasons, domestic and international law that is what it wanted the warren commission to find. the warren commission simply did not go down all the trails. that is, i think, the greatest weakness. it did not know that they were also being lied to. it is clear that the cia did not tell them the truth about its falling kozlov or about the assassination plots against castro. the fbi and the cia never told the commission about their arrangements with the mafia.

there were so many things that they did not know. what shocked me was 50 years after the warren commission interviewing people who were riding the plaza. they saw things were never ever interviewed by that warren commission. i felt that my obligation to play out to people the pieces that don't fit into the warren commission report, a good example, when president kennedy was shot at 12:30 p.m. the palestine november 22nd 19631 minute many people were pointing

to the source of the gunfire. the first officer had his gun drawn. they expect to find a gunman. instead he encountered a man who was secret service. smith was familiar with the secret service credentials. there were often in dallas for one reason or the other. two other officers reported essentially the same thing. there was apparently more than one with secret service credentials up on the grassy knoll. there was just one problem. the secret service and the warren commission and everyone else select edit has identified the location of every single secret service officer at that time. no one was in dealey plaza. all the secret service officers are taught to go with their protectees. they went to the hospital with the president and vice president, soon-to-be president

johnson to reach you were these people? the secret service credentials that no one can identify. i don't have an answer. i have explained it in the book, people can make up their own mind. that is the warren commission. >> would it change anything at all? what is still just be that oswald acted alone? >> that is a great question. if people for pretending to be secret service why were they in the lee plaza, why were they at the top of the grassy knoll. this would add some evidence, some hard evidence to the belief that perhaps other people were involved, perhaps there was a second shooter behind the picket fence. i am convinced that there was a second shooter. he either did not fire or you missed entirely because the bullet trajectories clearly go to the window on the sixth floor

where someone fired, and i believe the overwhelming amount of evidence suggests it was lee harvey oswald. anyway, the shotgun, the boxes, lots of other things. think about this. a president of the united states was killed with a $19 rifle. a little research. actually it was considered to be a fairly good rifle. the conspiracy -- the people who question whether he could have done it. he could have made that calculation. >> possible that the scope was knocked out after the shooting. >> it is possible. it's possible that it wasn't i encourage people to go to the sixth floor museum.

they have done a wonderful job in trying to preserve what happened that day. dallas almost tried to tear down the texas school book depository. it would have been a terrible idea. the people who run the museum have done a wonderful job, when you go there the first thing everyone says is, my god, it is such a small, compact seen. it is this enormous event that changed america happened there, and people expected to be kind of like times square. it is a tiny little area. you know, i would have a hard time hitting a water bucket 20 feet away. i think almost anybody under certain conditions existing in the return to second might have been able to it that car. it was moving at about 11 miles-per-hour. i mean, this was not all that difficult to shot. also, kozlov was a better shot than he has been given credit for. and a great marksman by any

means, but he also was not bad. you have to take all that into account. again, i have to be very critical. i have outlined above 30 ways that they failed in the kennedy half century. it is embarrassing. what really is the most irritating democratic, the american public would have waited in the amount of time for a good investigation, what has been any amount of money for the warren commission to do its job. if it had done the job thoroughly and well in 1963-64, we would not have had 50 years of pure cynicism, much generated by their results of the kennedy assassination. >> the next question, as the 50 years of cynicism undermined the confidence in the u.s. government? a lot of it goes to the warren commission, the belief that the government defeated the empire of japan cannot see germany, the

interstate highway system, putting man into space. government generally did not solve the great depression but at least in urease it and give people hope. evidence from the time, 1787 up until 1963, the government generally works to the benefit of the american people. so the question is, if you could go back to dealey plaza and you could be the -- even at 12 noon, dallas time, november 22nd, 1963 and you had a 35 mm camera and you could position yourself in place to come up with photographic evidence to prove the conspiracy, it was not a conspiracy, where would you put yourself on a line? >> a great question. i would have loved to have been there, not that you could change history, but just to see what happened. first of all, i would have

positioned myself right across from oslo's window. he was visible for some time before he moved back into position. so i would have wanted to clearly identify that it was see in the sixth floor window. but i would have had plenty of time then to go to the grassy knoll area behind the picket fence or even on the rail yard to see whether anyone was shooting from there. i am convinced. >> the grassy knoll, as i recall, texas live oak trees there. there was a fence there. >> that clear area across the road from the six, would you have a clear side of vision of where the best man all whenever they call the other shooter might have been? >> would have been able certainly, the reason no one got a good look if someone was there

was because naturally all eyes were focused on the president and first lady. so it was impossible for people to see directly. there were not looking directly. it was not the shooter on the overpass. it was not the shooter from the dallas texas building. so from the sewer. >> the secret service agent. >> the theories about the secret service shooting kennedy are absurd. they are as absurd as george h. w. bush was outside the school book depository. there are actually websites or pages on website speed ridiculous. i do all of these -- there was a conspiracy to decapitate the lankan government. no doubt about it. all quickly apprehended and tried and convicted. sloppy, but justice was served. with garfield mcanally, a lone

assassin is focused on conspiracy. the catcher in the dawn. why have so many conspiracy theories, they cannot be just the one report. is is something deeper about the moral and balance of the ultimate john kennedy war hero, rich and handsome, debonair president being killed by the slowly loser? >> of course the moral balance of the people, that may be part of it. i think that there are many reasons. first, you mentioned lincoln. don't forget to harry truman. that was a conspiracy. the porter rican nationalists tried to kill him. we have had a conspiracy. i guess you could say part of it is a good thing. americans do not accept the official word without questioning which is in our nature, our history, in the first amendment. but the other part of this is simply that, again, the warren commission did a poor job and

did not answer a lot of questions. second, there was an imbalance between the most powerful person in the world at the peak of his power, probably the peak of america's power being eliminated by a loner. i don't think he was a night. he was actually very bright. he was a loner and clearly disturbed in various ways. he had a very unusual life. the imbalance is enormous, and you have to imagine that life makes sense to let it. can life makes sense wind is powerful 305th president of the united states can be eliminated by someone like lee harvey oswald with may be a lucky shot? so i think all of those are reasons why. and then various things have emerged. we were being lied to about what the cia was doing well with the fbi was doing, what the government was doing, what the kennedy administration was doing , when johnson -- lyndon

johnson himself commented publicly after his white house years that president kennedy in the kennedy administration running a murder incorporated in the caribbean with castro and other leaders around the world. why was kennedy in texas in november? >> it is very clear. no question about that. he was trying to help the texas democratic party reunite. there had been a terrible split between the liberals and conservatives best represented on the liberal side by senator ralph yarborough. and lyndon johnson was kind of in the middle. he was trying to put the party back together. a close friend. secretary of the navy. but essentially kennedy is only really interested well in the electoral context that you would

understand well and i understand well. he had been elected by a smidgen. some say not at all. the 118,000 votes and the official record. texas, a tiny, tiny number of votes, you know, a few tens of thousands in the large texas electric. look, kennedy during his whole term worried about that reelection. it did not matter that things are good. he remembered out clothes had been. he needed texas. that is why he was there. >> let me give you a little bit of time to talk about the recordings. the entire basis, as i recall, of the house investigation that concluded in 1979 was the fact that there was a microphone that was stuck open of a dallas police officer recording the events. this recording was saved but

lost to history for a time and they claim that it was four shots and because of the time that oswald fired it was impossible. it was impossible for four shots to be fired therefore the conclusion was as to a second shooter. and the house investigation said that there was april conspiracy. >> that's right. >> what have you discovered to refute that? >> is essentially we have blown the committee report apart, blown their conclusion apart and let me explain why. it was formed because three-quarters of the americans republic did not believe the warren commission. by the way, three-quarters of the american public does not believe the warren commission. nothing is changed. essentially congressman's for getting complaints from their constituents demanding after the revelations that came with watergate, the frank church committee about the cia what

really happened. we don't believe the warren commission. the house of representatives formed a select committee, house special committee on assassinations and they worked from 76 until 79 on this subject and others. it worked in the other assassinations as well, let the king. in the case of john kennedy they have been preparing to endorse the basic conclusions of the warren commission after having interviewed people that the warren commission did not get to committee investigating trails the warren commission did not go down. in toward the very end they heard about this. it is a recording that was done at police headquarters that had a this past -- dispatch officer still living who was a sheriff down in dallas for many years thereafter. he deserves a lot of credit for helping to deserve -- preserve the dicta belts. it started at about 945 in the

morning before air force one landed. they stopped, at least the ones that we have after about 340 once air force one and they're forced to and the press plane had left at the end of that terrible they. well, there are a whole bunch of them. we managed to get all of them out of the national archives. we have subjected them through a wonderful firm, some of the best sound analysts in the world that do a lot of work for the pentagon and others. he subjected them to tasks that have never been done before, it will to up to attract more information from them, more lines of dialogue. fact, we have a transcript of 30,000 words from the date the delta of that day and have enhanced the sound quality, all of which we're going to release on an application, a summary in the book. now, let's get to the key to bell. the key dicta belt was recording at police headquarters at 1230

on november 22nd. the committee and some sound analysts at the time using accepted methods for 1979, not to criticize them. they came back and said, we find for impulses in the 1230 times on of gunfire. for impulses that are clearly, they said, to a 95 percent probability gunfire. well, four gunshots, as you said correctly means a conspiracy because the tralee everyone, nobody can fire a bullet for times. >> exactly. not possible. so he can only squeeze off three. the fourth shot means that there is conspiracy and a bit of a test says dealey plaza, shooting into sand bags and determined that the noise most likely was from the grassy knoll picket fence area, so it all seemed to

fit together. in the national academy of sciences did a study on it. while these impulses in a different from what we find over here. but the indians could not prove anything and says this just needs more research. we question but don't know the results. there was another study in 2002 that reinforced the house select committee and increase the probability to 96%. that is where we took it. i think once people read but we have in the kennedy half century, once they view the entire report by our team which we will put on our website, the kennedy half century and in this moble application, everyone will see the truth. and here it is. there is no gunfire and all. turns out that those four impulses are no different than a dozen other impulses of virtually the same time. what were they? they're work, we think of the rattling of the microphone on a

motorcycle. where was the policeman on the motorcycle? the select committee said that policeman was a guy named h. p. mclean, and he was right there just a few yards, handful of yards behind the presidential limousine, the gunfire was loud. so it could be recorded. h. p. mclean always denied that he had the stuck microphone. the police dispatcher always denied it was h. p. mclean. there were absolutely right. we have identified the policeman. his name is willie price. he is deceased, but retraced his movements, which face the fact that he believes he had stuck microphone and it got a substitute motorcycle that day that had problems and he was at the trade mark to one and a half miles from the plaza. the trademark was where president kennedy was going to deliver the luncheon address, and tragically was address that

was never delivered. sitting there right on the recording. you can hear severally the sounds of sirens. clearly great commotion as something wars by at high speed. we check their records. there were no other siring activated vehicles operating in dallas at that time. they had to report into the police department. i was the presidential limousine and the accompanying police cars during a 80 miles-per-hour to try new president can be saved at parkland hospital. you cannot record gunshots to a half miles away it will not

provide the answers to the assassination, but what it does provide commit is a black box for the crash that occurred on november 22nd. it is living history. you can go through the day and hear air force one landing, the crowds crushing at this corner. we have to move them back here. something happened in the motorcade. get them into the railyard. the president is going to parkland hospital. our officer rushes, looks and a limousine and says over the mike , the president got his head blown off. and that is where we first realized or the police first realize that it was over and then the police chief at the trademark tells the officer of, no, i don't believe he will be covering for that address. this goes all the way through until air force one left and covers the return of the president's body.

it is a black box for this horrible day in history. so it is useful even though it does not solve the assassination problem. >> obviously president kennedy had gone through other motorcade's after he was elected in various cities. was there anything distinct and different about this motorcade? was it, as you talk about, not bulletproof. even if it had been on it may have deflected the bullet. we will never know, but most of -- the lithology, it was just a shield. the weather. >> that is exactly right. the secret service contingent last this state? was the route more questionable than if he had gone through atlanta or cleveland or other places? was anything out of the ordinary this day in terms of the behavior of the police, the secret service, or anyone

involved in the motorcade preparation and execution than other places? >> that is a critical question. the answer is no, and that is the problem. back in those days the thin blue line protecting the president was much thinner than anyone recognized. basically service agents were with president kennedy passing 200,000 unscreened people with hundreds of open windows in buildings right above kennedy where anyone could have taken a shot at him? , a secret service agents? twelve. twelve. >> as you wrote, 28 agents -- 26. some more at the field office. others travelled. >> that's right. we talked about 12. i made a controversial amendment . we wrapped it up with a special fund that we created using all

of the videotape and film of kiddy during his white house years. when people see this film which will be on the website, there will be shocked because it is so on like today. this president in particular loved to plunge into crowds which would frequently enveloped them. he was nearly assassinated on december 1960 as president-elect in palm beach. he had major plots broken up that we know about during his presidency in chicago and miami right before dallas. there were others that we don't know all the details about. my team found to the chicago right before the election were men with guns who were following kennedy in trying to close a two men were tackled by the police interested. people forgot all this. even worse than that.

it was a disaster waiting to happen. we have velma president kennedy abroad as well as at home from miles of the time standing in a limousine and even easier target than he was in dallas on a ridge or a second. >> select to stand up. he had made it to november november 22nd was a miracle. my conclusion is given what was going to happen, all the social turmoil, the fact that the kennedys have always attracted an unusually large number of haters would have been the larger miracle had he been. almost inevitable. it was almost inevitable. we learned from an obviously but we did not learn to live.

to close calls. you wrote about the campaign. he was nearly killed in 1981. >> numerous assassinations. >> numerous assassination threats. they all do. how do we compare? twenty-four presidents. how does that compare to other republics? >> less than 10%. we have more than most republics . think about it. you have roosevelt shot as he was running for the second term. in an instant almost everyone has forgotten. president hoover came near to death. a revolutionary group tried to blow up is train. franklin roosevelt as president-elect, within inches

killed the mayor of chicago, saved by inches. harry truman. so you have for presidents just prior to kennedy. yet if you were to ask the secret service on november 201st 1963, they would have said, we have a perfect record, which they did. they started guarding presidents after mckinley was assassinated. airforce one right after the assassination. a secret service agent who had been guarding kennedy was pounding on the wall inside the plane saying, we have never lost a president before. how could this happen. we've never lost president before. it was really believe that it could not happen that encourage it to happen. have you ever taken the crystal ball of prognostication and applied it to the 1960 campaign in forecast with yet come what had been? >> we actually covered the 60 campaign at great length.

the crystal ball. the question, an illinois of state and down stay with the republicans, the republicans, as it was with mayor daley in chicago and texas and other places, but would you have forecasted kennedy as a winner? >> if you look at their regular factors of the election he should have won by larger margin because of the economic factors more than anything else. it was catholicism. that was an election about religion. all the issues they discussed at almost nothing to do with the results. 80 percent of catholics voted for kennedy. but you ask for factors. i have to tell you something. the market this the more i think you know, sean trendy, he is most recently making the argument that kennedy actually lost the popular vote. forget about voter fraud.

the powers that be in 1960 did kennedy great favorite. they added in the alabama democratic electoral votes for the electors to kennedy when kennedy's name was not on the ballot. that is how much opposition there was. if you subtract those votes he lost the popular vote to nixon. nixon had done one thing, forget about the debate. you could argue that either way. first one held kennedy, but the effective war not by the time of the election. nixon went back up. the critical mistake that he made was not getting eisenhower out on the campaign trail earlier. why did that happen? because maybe eisenhower unbeknownst to president eisenhower had made a call to vice president nixon in the summer doing the bidding.

president eisenhower himself was not asked. he wondered why he was not being asked. he did not know what his wife had done, the best evidence that we had, and eisenhower went out on the campaign trail that last week so it makes and sure enough eisenhower who was a 60 percent popularity pulled nixon up virtually into a tie. imagine if he had been campaigning for two weeks. i think nixon would have won the 60 election. >> kennedy lost 1960, what would he have done? i know what the what if. >> exactly. you're right about that. to what if question. but it would be fun to do and to think about. he was reelected in 58. so we would have been in into

64. my guess is you would have run for reelection in the senate, may be tried again at the end of nixon's a years. what did not have been interesting in positions of been reversed. i don't want to propose that nixon would have been assassinated. lee harvey oswald once told his wife that he was going to assassinate vice president nixon on a trip to dallas. isn't that interesting? so you wonder. and when nixon was told about kennedy's murder he was really shaken up. all of his key aides said that he was -- maybe it was going through his mind. my god, that could have been me if i had gotten a few more votes . >> it was not political. it was not political. the same way. he could have stopped carter, president carter. you know, -- >> the political dimension.

oswald had always been looking for something, looking for something. that is what got into the soviet union and what got into so many of these groups that he was in muncie up back to the united states. a story and of itself. really pro castro were really working with the fbi and new orleans with the anti-castro mr. bannister, working. >> to nt also associate with anti-communist russians? >> anti-communist russia's adopted at the odds all because they spoke russian, particularly marina. so very complicated. >> twenty-four. >> twenty-four. >> a lot of weird is that went on in a very short time. >> a great, great weirdness which gives fuel to the conspiracy fire command you can understand why. you can ask a lot of legitimate questions about it.

lots of doubts. member to second. a lot of doubts about -- many more as you have now proven about the house investigation. what is your conclusion. take us through that day. did he act alone? was there really a magic bullet? >> i don't exclude the possibility that someone experienced cause wall. the secret service credential story bothers me a great deal and some other things bother me. i outlined a number of them in the book. i am not going to say come as others have done, case closed. takes too much hubris to do that for me. >> go back there. was he saying case closed as

political motivation? >> i think he was saying of all that debt alone, and that may be the case. but i don't see how anyone, another one, very impressive but, very impressive name. they don't fully address these pieces that do not fit. i just have a more questioning mind about some of these things. if you forced me i would go with the oswald acted alone, but i am not confident about it. what i am confident about is that the warren commission did a terrible job and the house select committee on assassinations to the terrible job. we had to bossed investigations. fifty years on and only one prediction i can make. one hundred years from now children, grandchildren, students, their children, they will all be watching documentary's about conspiracy theories involved in the kennedy assassination even with the release of the remaining

material. >> we hope it comes out october october 2017. it will be up to the new president to decide whether the cia gets to keep secret or redacted its 11,701 remaining documents that have not been released which is many thousands and thousands of pages relating to the kennedy assassination. i want to see what is in there, what remaining pages of from the fbi and others. let's see the full story before we reach a final conclusion which is another reason why do not believe in case closed. you have to see all the evidence before you can reach a final conclusion all sealed, archivists allowed to talk. they don't know all of them what is and all of those documents. let me give credit.

>> one wonders whether all of the documents were actually turned over. this is the result of the records active president george h. w. bush. 1992. that was a direct result of oliver stone's movie jfk. i wanted to give credit to a journalist. an excellent website. and he has focused on cia documents and came up with one that was really interesting just one month ahead of the assassination. the cia reacting to his visit to mexico city. kozlov is maturing. he is maturing. well, he matured right into a presidential assassin. he had practiced trying to assassinate general edwin locker in april of 1963 if only the

police force and the fbi if the time had spent more resources to try to trace that assassination attempt. he was only slightly injured with a bullet that was fired through his house. it almost certainly was all. he told his wife what he had done in great detail. >> how big was the secret service? >> how many assassins? >> you know, there are amazed that the only people in the files of the secret service for people who wrote and threaten the president directly. as a policeman or investigators the people you don't write. so.

>> did oslo never read threatening letters? >> they did not have a single question will individual on file . dallas was a hotbed of anti kennedy sentiment, and there have been incidents involved. dallas in particular. the incident with adlai stevenson a couple of months before where he was spat upon and a salted. they had been attacked right before the election in 1960. the local newspapers were strongly come virulently anti kennedy. i came across a wonderful tour guide in dallas. a lot of behind-the-scenes places. the former first lady of dallas was very helpful to me in doing this, but he took me to all the hidden places that people normally do not see including

oslo's jail cell which is now closed and abandoned. but at the end of the day i quote this in the book. he has done this for years. related to the deletes, kind of obsessed with it. i said, you focused on this for years and years. what do you really think? he says, you know, i know everything that there is to know about november 22nd, 1963, except what really happened. that was when my eyes opened. >> interesting. we'll have a few minutes left. i will tell you some more. i will start first with what is the 50-year legacy of jfk. assassinated under mysterious circumstances or was there something more? >> the part of the book that i am actually proud of is the last third. retrace john f. kennedy's legacy , his life after death through all nine of his

successors. the spent more time on that than anything, including the assassination. we ask this question for each successor. how did this president use john f. kennedy to accomplish his own agenda. every single one of the president says use kennedy in one way or another, as you know better than 90 because of your books on reagan. the best use other than lbj was by ronald reagan who cited kennedy's so often you would have thought he was his running mate. >> not only that but during the a.d. campaign and primaries where there were democratic crossovers, the campaign ran commercials that featured president kennedy extolling the need to cut the taxes to get the country moving again. those were made into commercials by the reagan campaign. >> which was smart. and once he got in he used all of kennedy's words about why the across-the-board tax cuts that kennedy got almost got adopted

and he died right before it was scheduled to be voted on. but he used all of kennedy's words explaining why there was economic productivity in an across-the-board tax cut and then the anticommunist rhetoric. gosh, you go back to his inaugural address in other speeches that he gave, reagan was criticized for using the term evil empire. that was nothing compared to what kennedy said. >> it was once called an enlightened cold warrior. do you agree? >> i do. i also believe that in his last year because of the frightening prospect of nuclear war that he nearly experienced in the cuban missile crisis, he was looking for ways to make common cause with the soviets and with premier khrushchev and he was reaching out. we get the nuclear test ban treaty. that was the accomplishment that he was proud of. there were other things that he was planning on doing. so i think that he was moving

away from some of that rhetoric at the time of his death. of course, some conspiracy theorists' said is exactly why he was killed. it is a great theory. i am waiting to see the facts. i want to take them into a court room and have them hold up under cross-examination. i have yet to see them. >> but that begs the question. is he, like other democrats, the lost china argument. under his presidency we lost laos. so being an anti-communist and cold warrior and strong national defense, he ran on the missile gap in 1916. eisenhower was not happy about. he committed the first ground troops in southeast asia. the what if, kennedy would not have gone into vietnam in the way that lbj and nixon did, all

the nixon, you know, what kennedy, what you know a lot him as an anti-communist and not wanting to lose, would he have also gone, i jumped into southeast asia with both feet? >> i examine that question at length because i have great interest and, and here is my conclusion. kennedy deserves part of the blame for vietnam. you cannot exonerate him. he put a lot of advisers and some troops and their undercover . >> yes. but here is why i believe he never was going to do what johnson did. 5,305,000 troops in vietnam. first of all, if there is one word that describes president kennedy in office it is cautious. second, you always look to a politician's face. what was kennedy's face,

intellectual, universities, colleges. the very first place, strong opposition to dramatically increasing. >> eleanor roosevelt. very skeptical in 5960. he said he was not comfortable with the liberals and the democratic party for. >> they adopted him once it was in office. he really established that link in office. lyndon johnson, by contrast, was anti intellectual. he liked the fact that many of these kennedy intellectuals opposed his vietnam policies. of course his grandiose. his grandiose presidency led him to try to win this war that was on when a bull, and he wanted to do it in a big way. john f. kennedy would have agreed to a few little pilot programs. lyndon johnson hears about what

kennedy has done and countermands it and says, that is my kind of program. i wanted big, national. go full tilt. that is the difference between the two. i don't believe that kennedy would have done what don -- johnson did in vietnam, though he would have continued some level of involvement. ee from in it he was going to involve the troops. >> he say he still would have pursued anti-communist policies. >> would have done it differently, to a lesser extent using the caution that he had gained through the bay of pigs disaster and a triumph of the cuban missile crisis. he learned the hard way on the job and was an internationally internationally-minded person which is the contrast. johnson was a domestic politician. kennedy and always been so because of britain and world war two. more internationally focused. he understood.

because of his military background, undoubtedly, the heroism for more work to, greater respect for the joint chiefs then maybe lbj did because he was trying to direct the more common picking bombing targets and things like that. macarthur bag johnson in 1964 and johnson did not listen. i wonder if kennedy would have. >> i went to his funeral. and remember. bobby kennedy showed up. the spring of 64. he died. i saw them on the main streets. of course the macarthur memorial was right there. but i remember i just wanted to mention the fact that we have a chapter on each of kennedy's nine successors. we have new information and i guess the people have never come

across. carter, for example, gave me a long interview. i have been able to identify where the feud between carter and kennedy began. it was actually the campaign of 76. there is lot in there, and i am proudest of that section on legacy because we took the largest study ever done on former presidents and focused it on john f. kennedy. i hired peter card and john kerry, a terrific job. 2,000 adult americans said they could do a lot of analysis. plus six focus groups in richmond, virginia, chicago, los angeles. and we found that john f. kennedy with that short presidency is the most admired, like, respected, and popular president of the modern era. now, a historian who studies the actual record would say, come on 1,038 days.

but what was interesting to me, that is the judgment of the american people. we tattled that chapter, the people's president. and so i think readers will be interested to see how kennedy's view and why and the assassination is a big piece of it, but so was kennedy's public image. the rhetoric which is still staring, the self-deprecating humor, the glamorous major. >> i have the record album of the 61 inaugural address, and i can recite it. i still, you know, listen to it. i put on a couple of times a year. you mentioned the nine presidents following. although i came across a phrase once. reagan was the first president not to be haunted by the ghost of john kennedy. do you agree? >> yes. reagan knew himself. you know this much better than i

do. he had a center to himself, and he was not in the democratic party. he did not have to pretend to be the next jfk. each new democratic president had to pretend to be the next jfk. running for office and then serving in office. so i think there was a great difference there. as you know well, reagan was so shrewd about his cultivation of the entire kennedy family. it probably spend more time in his oval office than man in anyone else's since the kennedy assassination. >> of course reagan presented the congressional gold medal posthumously to bobby -- to robert kennedy that carter himself had refused to present. >> exactly. 1980. several sources. the entire kennedy family voted for ronald reagan. >> that was a rumor. >> the exception. she ready for john anderson.

>> president carter actually tell me a story about his speech, the dedication of the library. very cold to them. according to president carter at that event. that's when the first realize that he did not have a problem with ted kennedy to begin a problem with the entire kennedy family, and there were a big plan. the book war. >> more out of the presidency of john f. kennedy then we actually read in the historical record. that is the power of people in the democracy. maybe that is one of the altman legacies of john f. kennedy's short time in the white house. >> very nice. >> thank you. >> terrific.

>> that was "after words", book tv signature program in which authors and nonfiction books are interviewed by journalist on public policy makers, legislatures, and others. airing every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday, and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list. ..